


Age of Pretense

by helianthe



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi | Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken
Genre: Dragons, Gen, Modern Elibe, but not AU, with illustrations!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helianthe/pseuds/helianthe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two thousand years after the Great Movement of Bern, a modern Lycian scholar searching for truth discovers a lead in the form of a mysterious girl abandoned by time and memory. In an Elibe where magic and dragons belong only in mythology, a single act of kindness will once again engulf the world in international crisis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Age of Pretense

In a lonely apartment in the center of Pherae, a young green-eyed girl peered out of her unfurnished window. Frail steam from the cup in her hand spun into her misty breath and tumbled against the cold glass. She watched the changing patterns unblinkingly as they swirled on top of her reflection. The room was dark, but the eerie light from outside cast a bluish haze that swallowed her body.

Arbitrarily prompted, she set down her cup and unlatched the window and opened it with a creak. A surf of cold wind blew inside and sent shivers crawling up her forearms. Putting her head through the opening, she shivered as the breeze whisked through her long, thick magenta hair. Pressing a few fingers at her temple keep the strands out of her gaze, she looked out at the million lights winking back at her. A siren echoed somewhere a few blocks away, and shadows of people passed the streets. Following the outline of buildings with her eyes, she raised her gaze until they met an empty sky.

Thousands of miles away in a cluttered hotel room in Aquleia, a man sat on a king-sized bed with a laptop computer balanced on his knee. The light from the monitor reflected off of the surface of his glasses, concealing his eyes beneath. After a few moments of tense staring at the screen, he groaned and ran a hand through his black hair, almost risking the laptop's fall from its precarious position.

With a despondent demeanor he closed it and began to unlace his tie. The television hummed on its low volume, where a politician was speaking animatedly onscreen to a room full of flashing camera lights and important-looking people. As the applause rolled on, the man in the hotel room stared blankly at it for a moment, but was then diverted when the coffee machine began to choke and sputtered scalding liquid all over the table.

Even further off, far away in the fields of Sacae there was a youth feeding his dog leftover scraps of meat. The night was clean and silent there and only the moon provided the necessary light. Nothing obstructed the view of the horizon or took away the glory of the stars. The young man sat upon the vacant hill and pondered the folk heroes of his childhood.

In a similar way there were others: a dark-haired Bernese woman waiting in a café someplace in Lycia, an Etrurian teenager laying awake in bed somewhere in Bern. These faces were a few of the millions that went to sleep that night in Elibe, the year of 3012.

Pherae was the heart; the girl beside her window hardly knew the passage of time. The eternity and ephemerality of each second held no meaning for her, just as she was of no consequence to the passage of time. But as events would come to pass, she would one day speak on behalf of the nations. But this night was empty, cold, lonely, insignificant... That day would come, but later, much later.

With a dark expression, she lay her lukewarm cup upon the counter and closed the window. The morning would soon come, and perhaps it too would be a better day.

Meanwhile, just a few streets away from where she locked herself away, a boy rubbed his eyes and yawned, closing the book in his desk. After thrusting the book in his bag he jumped on his bed and made his way under the layers of blankets. Though waves of crimson hair fell into his azure gaze, he easily reached over the table and turned out the light in the blink of an eye.


End file.
